The American media have begun the countdown to the 2016 Presidential Election. The major political parties are apoplectic about “stirring up the base” and “getting out the vote.” The demagoguery, the flag waving, and the wildly cheering crowds will gain momentum, reaching a feverish crescendo at the Party Conventions. There the baton will be passed to each Party’s nominee to carry that enthusiasm all the way to election night. There is no more anticipated or celebrated event than an American Presidential election. All of the speeches, the fundraising, the public debates, the folksy camaraderie, and relentless polling have only one goal: to win your vote. The voter’s dilemma, however, is more than determining who or what deserves his/her vote.

In an “absolute democracy,” every issue and every office would be determined by a plebiscite, i.e., a majority of legal citizens must vote on what and who will govern them. For example, in ancient Greece each citizen exercised the right of self-government by voting in the Athenian public forum. Although the Grecian model may have inspired democracy, it was rejected by our founding fathers. Our system of government, though instigated by the Declaration of Independence and defined by the Constitution, was voted into existence by representatives of the colonies in the Continental Congress. As one might expect, they chose a “representative democracy” with checks and balances built into an equal, but separate, tripartite system of government. That system was designed to steer America’s course in concert with the will of future generations and with the collaborative wisdom of elected officials toward a more perfect union, albeit free of any form of tyranny. America’s future would depend upon how Americans evolved this union. Whereas the Greeks had slaves and denied women full citizenry, Americans would eventually move beyond these limitations. To this day, we Americans continue to develop a more perfect union, inspired by these same founding documents. The realization of Lincoln’s phrase, “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” rests solely upon the voting authority of the people and the fair, honest, sensible custodians of our tripartite system of government. And those custodians are accountable to the electorate—with the exception of Supreme Court Justices who are accountable solely to lady justice and the Constitution. Though amendments to our Constitution are rare, we citizens regularly define the course of America through our representatives in Congress and the President. We cast our votes and trust our elected officials will represent our interest. This trust is critical in determining our vote. But it is also at the heart of the voter’s dilemma.

You may well question who you should trust when casting your vote. Do you vote for the candidates who support your priorities or at least most of them? Should you vote the “Party line” where you believe your priorities are generally advocated? Perhaps you are a single issue voter and will vote for any candidate that, for example, will build an unsurmountable wall across our border—or for any candidate that will keep immigrant families together and grant them a path to citizenship. However you choose to vote you know you must accept the will of the majority if we are to have a stable democracy. It is that acceptance that bodes a cautionary tale: you must not vote for any candidate incapable of representing and serving the general welfare even if you agree with him/her on a particular issue. Such a candidate seeks something other than the public service demanded by our system. Most likely, his/her goal is to win office for its own sake, not yours. To some degree, all candidates attempt to manipulate voters by advocating for issues they support. “Speaking the voters mind” is the job of a politician. But the politician who rides a single issue into office in order to cater to special interest or to reward large campaign donors does not serve the general public. He/she not only violates your trust, but undermines a representative democracy (reference “The Weirdness of American Policy”). In this instance, you may feel like your vote does not count. And that feeling is the voter’s dilemma most of us face.

It appears that 63% of the electorate agrees with this last sentence since they did not show up for the last Federal election. Currently, both political parties seem to be attracting the most electoral fervor around candidates who claim, on one side, that our political leaders are “stupid, bought and paid for” or, on the other side, are subservient to “the billionaire class.” There is more than a kernel of truth in this sad assessment. Campaign fundraising competes with the time our elected officials devote to serving the public interest; and well-paid lobbyists control much of the public agenda in Washington. On the other hand, there are well intentioned office holders who are truly dedicated to our welfare and America’s future. Unfortunately, their voices are often lost in the media blitz where only the most outlandish make the news. Our system of government is deteriorating because we are losing control of both the public forum and our electoral voice. Congress has been high-jacked by single-issue minorities, who garner the broadcast news megaphone with claims of injustice and alleged “unconstitutional” behavior of the majority. In some cases, they even quote the First and Second Amendments to suit their purpose without regard to legitimate Constitutional interpretation or Supreme Court rulings.

Congress also has fallen under the sway of the moneyed class a/o corporate America whose lobbyists now write much of the legislation that is allowed to reach the floor. Matters of general interest, such as immigration reform or background checks for gun purchases, are tabled and never appear in the Congressional record. Some of our elected officials actually believe they can hide from the electorate their true allegiance by not appearing in the voting record. These officials should be exposed by the fact-checking, truth-verifying members of the media. But, instead, their behavior has become the norm. Their game-playing mechanisms to hold onto power go almost unnoticed; and their distortion of the public agenda in favor of loud minorities or the financial elite has become “business as usual.” The irony is that Americans have already voted against these miscreants while still losing the public forum. The current majority party in Congress actually lost the popular vote. This irregularity owes to another form of game-playing called gerrymandering. Americans have already shown their preference for specific issues in the polls—some have even represented their issues at the very doorsteps of Congressional offices and in Congressional committee meetings. But their voices still go unheard on the floor of Congress. So what does it mean when neither the vote nor the voice of the American majority is heard by its elected representatives? What does it mean for the state of our democracy and the viability of our system of government?

My answer to that question is simple: our system, if not broken, is frayed. If the 2016 election is not a turning point for America, then when and how will we revive our democracy? If we feel our vote no longer counts, then we are doomed to live with the dysfunction we all see in Washington. Being so disillusioned is a lot like living in the dark and liking it. But only mushrooms flourish in the dark. Maybe this disillusionment comes from the fear that even greater voter turnout cannot fix what ails our system. That fear is based upon an irremediable cynicism and is another form of the voter’s dilemma.

Our popular vote today is heavily influenced by an easily distracted media, by a barrage of mind-numbing slogans, and by political pandering more than by reasoned debates and open dialogue on substantive issues. This negative influence is paid for by well-healed, self-interested agents and is promulgated by a portion of the broadcast media more invested in ratings and paying sponsors than in journalistic integrity. The common denominator here is money. My previous blogs on this subject (reference “American Revolution 2016” and “The Shining City on a Hill”) addressed one way for Americans to recapture control of the Washington agenda. I urged reform of our electoral process and public financing of Federal elections. So far only one candidate has proposed public financing of elections. Obviously, I would like to see more candidates join him in that proposal. My intent here is merely to promote more dialogue on this topic. Consider taking #the2016pledge. Perhaps we can begin to resolve the voter’s dilemma and make our votes truly count.

(Take #The2016Pledge)

One day, an asteroid will hit the earth, causing a catastrophic event, possibly our extinction. Astrophysicists have told us so. Perhaps within the next one hundred years, global warming will make many of our coastal cities uninhabitable and wreak havoc on our supplies of fresh water and arable land. Many scientists have told us so. If we fail to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons and/or to disarm existing nuclear powers, the earth may one day be ravaged by a drifting radioactive cloud, laying waste to all in its path under a stifling canopy. Many world leaders have warned us of this death-dealing specter slowly suffocating all terrestrial life. But do the Cassandra pleadings of these learned individuals have any more bearing on our daily lives than the Biblical or Koranic promise of an end of days and the final Judgment Day?

An individual life is short enough to limit our concerns solely within its boundaries. For many generations of human existence, the focus has been to overcome the immediate hazards, to struggle to survive, or to succeed with those temporal ambitions circumscribed by a singular lifespan. But I wonder whether the brave, new world we are entering may force us to expand our vision beyond the life of any individual, community, or even nation. Social media, for example, has made us aware of a refugee baby washed ashore in a distant land, of hurricanes ravaging a densely populated island, of kidnapped women killed, raped, and enslaved on another continent, of epidemics, of tribal conflicts, and of those suffering masses pinned under the boot of tyranny. Perhaps our compassion for our fellow human beings is now challenged to extend beyond the confines of our immediate family and neighbors. And perhaps we are approaching a threshold where that compassion can begin to extend even beyond our own time. The 22nd century could be filled with promise for humanity or not, depending upon how we live and interrelate with our world now.

No single individual can change the world, but each of us can make our place within it better not only for ourselves but also for those around us. And occasionally, we have the opportunity to band together to make improvements on a broader scale. Communities, for example, are built upon the bedrock of common interest and commitment to the general welfare of its members. America’s founding fathers built a nation on that principle. It is possible for our nation to be as united around that principle today as it was at its beginning. Furthermore, we can be that “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.” It is even possible that our nation might bring about that new world order we have strived to build since World War II. But any such world order will be a reflection of who we are as a nation. And herein lays a deep rooted misconception in our self-image—actually, a propensity for blind spots.

Let me explain by way of an example from South Africa. When Mandela and Archbishop Tutu implemented the “Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995,” they were attempting to make their nation face the truth about apartheid—its dreadful human consequences for both its victims and its perpetrators. They were exposing a blind spot in their national self-image. They knew no real democracy was possible until their nation was reconciled with its past. White supremacy cannot be eliminated by merely relegating it to a past easily forgotten and painted over by a few systemic changes. The menace of racism merely goes underground where it is no longer seen for what it is—a blind spot in the moral character of a nation.

We Americans have several such blind spots that inhibit our ability to model or lead a new world order. Without writing a lengthy dissertation on this subject, let me point out a few sign posts that illustrate some of our blind spots.
 > If you have travelled the South, you are well aware of the many memorials erected in tribute to the army of the Confederacy. Now compare these memorials with those displayed all over Germany in remembrance of the horrors of Nazism and the holocaust. What we are hiding behind the courage of Confederate soldiers are the remaining visages of white supremacy. Not only was slavery wrong, but its legacy persists and still haunts us today. Germany, by contrast, has owned the mistakes of its past and moved on.
 > Although we are signatories to the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture, during the previous Administration we redefined torture as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” For a time we not only deluded ourselves about the nature of torture but hid one of those “inalienable rights” behind the mandate of national security.
 > In violation of our own Constitutional preamble to “provide for the common defense,” we have engaged in offensive, indeed, preemptive war under the false guise of an impending “mushroom cloud” over out cities. Once again the “invisibility cloak” of national security prevented us from weighing the ethical constraints on such a war.
 > Often those who plea for their first amendment rights ignore the ninth and fourteenth amendments and choose not to recognize that the separation of church and state is a basic assumption of our form of government. Our founding fathers were well schooled in the history of European religious wars. They established a Constitution and rule of law that allows individuals to practice freely their religion but limits the ability of any religious practice to “deny or disparage” the rights of others.
So America is not perfect. But what has made us “exceptional” is our ability to rise up and face a bad reality and change it for the better, however long it may take for that change.

Recently I wrote about a current blind spot that inhibits a fair assessment of government dysfunction. We are told that “big government” is the problem and an obstacle to fundamental change. And we are constantly exposed to the trivialities of the political back and forth, distracting us from the real issues. While large campaign donors and lobbyists have been successful at creating this “big government” bugaboo, the broadcast media determines what news we hear based upon what titillates our baser interests in an attempt to hold our attention long enough to attract paying sponsors. Distracted by this news blitz, we miss the really important stories: a political Party is using State governments to restrict voting; candidates for office woo our vote against “big government” only to serve the interest of lobbyists and large campaign donors. They are not really against government because they want to wield the power of government and assume that, once in office, they are the government. But, in fact, we are the government! They are elected to represent our interests, as generally prescribed in the Preamble of the Constitution. If control over government policy seems to be slipping away from the electorate, then we Americans have to take the initiative and exert the power of the vote. If we do so, we can begin to eliminate some of the other blind spots as well. If you do not believe this assertion, I have to ask how you would define a democracy.

My previous blog was intended to provoke debate on how we Americans might swing control of our Federal government back towards the electorate and away from wealthy campaign donors, super PACS, corporate media interests, and power hungry politicians. Towards that purpose, any who agree with me can take #The2016Pledge on Twitter or Facebook. Maybe we can inspire others to be heard as well. If we fail to act, we will continue to be mired in the morass of bickering politicians more invested in the agenda of special interest groups and big money donors. And the credibility of America’s leadership in the world will be further undermined, leaving big issues such as space hazards, climate change, and nuclear non-proliferation unattended. We can not only have a positive impact on our family, friends, and associates, but, in a democracy, we can also ban together and have a much larger impact on our country. Given the status of America in the world, that impact can become significant for many peoples and the planet we inhabit together. Our votes matter.

Democracy can be messy. The American experience is no exception. From the start, our founding fathers called each other names, warned of opposing positions’ dire consequences, and fought fiercely for their strongly held beliefs. What united them was the spirit of revolution from tyranny and from the prospect of a failed state. That spirit found its ultimate expression in our Constitution which states its purpose “to form a more perfect union . . . promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty” for all. Its preamble not only defines the collective vision for America but precipitated many other highly charged contests born of the same revolutionary fervor: the Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement, the New Deal, and later the civil rights and social legislation of the 1960’s. These change revolutions churn under the surface for decades until abruptly exploding into our history.

Since the 1960’s, by contrast, we have had the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran/Contra affair, a failed trillion dollar war venture in Iraq, and the Great Recession, but no effective counter or change revolution. The only “revolution” has been against big government, beginning in the 1980’s. The odd thing about this “revolution” is that it reverses 200 years of the American tradition of empowering our government to right social injustice, enhance our union, and introduce needed systemic change. Americans historically did not want their government to shrink, but to serve their interests more effectively. The idea that government services should diminish so that American business might flourish or American military might dominate the world stage is completely alien to our founding principles.

Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the American financial system, projected a government secured from overthrow by a wealthy aristocracy and managed for the economic benefit of all. Thomas Jefferson was not disinclined to use military power, but only in defense of the American continent and citizenry. They did not consider the Federal government as the enemy, but as the protector of the American way of life. For nearly all of our history, our Presidents have followed this same course—until the aftermath of World War II. America, emerging as the sole world power, has since increasingly focused its domestic policy on accumulating wealth in the business community and its foreign policy on expanding economic and military influence overseas. This focus has marginalized the spirit of 1776 and exposes America to a not uncommon fate for a world power. Although the siren call of power has created the great empires of history, it has also hastened their demise.

Perhaps we are beginning to learn the lesson of this history as we turn more towards diplomacy instead of war, towards regional solutions to endemic problems instead of weaponized proxies. The latter, it should be noted, have never served our interests in the long term—witness the South Vietnamese army, the mujahedeen of Russia’s Afghanistan, and the Iraqi military. But even if we soften our military imprint on the international stage, we continue to advance the hegemony of the American dollar and business acumen. In terms of international influence, this expansion of American investment banking and international corporations would seem most beneficial. But this benefit is severely weakened when the resultant wealth is accumulated almost exclusively in the coffers of a few Americans. Power and wealth are the natural goals of all nation states, but their value is conditional. Their pursuit can never be exclusive of those they serve and of our founding values. Has America been detoured from its original vision and can we find our way back? Can the coming election in 2016 be our turnaround? Perhaps we are at the threshold of a new American revolution, circa 2016.

Unfortunately, the premature beginning for the 2016 campaign season currently seems to be on a track to nowhere. What explains the recent success of an avowed socialist to attract enormous crowds to his presidential campaign? And, likewise, how does one explain the media attention expended upon a billionaire who is funding his own campaign for the presidency? On the one hand, we have a campaign against unfettered capitalism that creates income inequality at home and pursues global economic hegemony abroad in lieu of neglected domestic social programs. On the other hand, we have a member of the privileged class, tired of buying political influence through surrogates, advancing himself as the only one capable of making America great again—meaning more wealth for American businesses, greater international influence, and an interventionist military abroad.

Here we have two adverse movements heading for a collision. What both of these candidates have tapped into, however, is the enormous dissatisfaction Americans have with their political system, whether on the left or the right. Military misadventures, income inequality, and a dysfunctional Federal government have brought Americans to a point of disillusionment. Those elected to right the ship have been more concerned with rigging its direction towards their respective hold on office and power. The media, or so-called “fourth estate,” has become more invested in soap opera preoccupations with style and tone and in the slightest intimation of alleged scandal than in either realpolitik or American values. In my humble estimate, our current media circus does not educate the electorate or serve the political interests of Americans. More significantly, the Political Parties’ deference to fundraising and to manipulation of the election process make questionable whether their priorities favor public service over title and power. Indeed, I think it is time for the American electorate to take back its power: to eliminate the media circus; to remove the influence of money from federal campaigns; to restore the power of the vote to all Americans; and to redeem the American values upon which this nation is founded. Towards this end, I’m recommending that every eligible voter participate in a new American revolution by taking the following pledge:

I pledge to vote for candidates who promise to support voting rights legislation consisting of universal voter registration, Federal fair election guidelines, and populist regulations governing Federal campaign funding and candidate debates. The following further specifies this proposed legislation:
• Universal voting registration requires all citizens to be automatically registered to vote when they reach age eligibility and identify residency;
• Federal election guidelines shall require all States to provide voters with absentee ballots and at least three weekends of precinct voting before Election Day. Further, candidates for national office may not commence campaigns sooner than six months before Election Day;
• Campaign funds will consist of public funds drawn from .01% of all collected income tax returns (approximately 200 million dollars in 2014). For each biannual Federal election cycle, the IRS will collect and apportion these funds equally for each branch of Congress and an accumulated Presidential campaign fund. The established Political Parties will be responsible for the distribution of these funds to respective congressional candidates and to their respective nominees for presidential election campaigns. Private campaign contributions will be limited exclusively to primary elections, will not exceed $2,500 for each individual or corporate entity, and will be restricted to Political Parties with officially registered candidates for Federal offices. These Parties will be the only organizations permitted to raise campaign funds and to administer those funds solely for the purpose of primary campaigns for Federal office.
• And, finally, the government will manage all televised political debates between candidates for national office by providing the C-Span network and equipping moderators chosen in equal numbers by each Political Party from the academic community.

In 1925, Martin Buber was asked to address the Third International Education Conference whose subject was “The Development of the Creative Powers of the Child.” What the organizers of the conference failed to anticipate was the response of an authentic deep thinker to the assumptions intimated by this preassigned subject. He began his lecture with a refutation of its title: he said “of the nine words (in the title) . . . only the last three raise no question for me.” The alleged capability identified as the “creative powers of the child” he felt was not properly designated. Further, the concept of “developing” this alleged creative ability in the child might risk misdirecting an individual away from his/her natural instincts, in effect destroying what was original in the very child to be educated. Today, I feel, we still struggle with what we mean by education itself. There are perhaps as many definitions of education as there are respective roles in our education system. Obviously, there are the teachers in our schools. They seem to know what they are doing. But they conduct their profession in a public school system that is governed by administrators, regulated by political appointees/legislators, and influenced by the expectations of parents. These non-teacher entities are the representative public. But do they know which teachers to support and what best practices to be replicated? This representative public hires teachers, buys textbooks, provides resources like computers and teaching aids, often determines curriculum, and manages overall behavioral standards for the classroom environment. Like Buber nearly a century ago, I question whether this “public” has properly designated what it means by “education.”

What Buber had to say 90 years ago still has relevance today and can be further extended to our very concept of education. Let’s start with Buber’s assessment. Are children born with unique creative ability? Well, they are born unique with many undeveloped potentials. We can all agree with that assertion. But creativity is an actual attribute, not a potential. When my pre-school daughter scribbled on her bedroom wall, I did not recognize artistic genius—just my baby playing with crayons. The capability she demonstrated was not creativity but the power of an originator. She, like all children, discover very quickly that they are subjects in a world of objects: playthings and the various forms in their environment are presented ready-made to be destroyed, moved, changed or tossed aside. Generally, we see our children at play and admire their spontaneity, curiosity, and ingenuity in the way they tear apart or put together whatever forms they find before them. A teacher, however, presents them with the specific forms of a curriculum. He/she attempts to harness their innate capability to effect change in their environment by focusing their attention on course material and the manner in which it can be manipulated to achieve objectives. Great teachers seem to know instinctively how to attract the child’s curiosity to the subject matter to be taught and how to guide them through the steps to acquire knowledge and, yes, the ability to use what they have learned to create for themselves and to relate to the world in which they were born. Sometimes we assume that the young student is a tabula rasa (an empty slate) that the teacher must fill up with knowledge and test like a computer program that returns only what has been stuffed into its code. The problem with this assumption is that it replaces development with compulsion—a kind of force-feeding—which can only lead to boredom, rebellion, or learned idiocy. (In a fundamentalist environment, it leads to a blind acceptance of principles that subvert the individual to the dictates of others.) The teacher is the developer who shows the way and guides the students along the path to becoming creators and producers in the world they will inherit. What Buber had to say about the misnomers of his time can be extended to ours. For example, what do we mean by “education?” The word comes from the Latin ex, “out of,” and ducere, “to lead,” and denotes a specific quality of leadership. The teacher does not just lead by example or by authority, but mainly by teasing out of the students not only interest in a subject, but the discipline to learn and apply it in their individual lives. A tuned violin still cannot play itself. But the curious student can be led by an astute teacher to develop the skills he/she has learned in the classroom to make a better version of the self and a more productive member of society. This learning bears no resemblance to achievements in standardized tests. The later provide a statistical framework for evaluating our public school system in a very generic way. But they are not nearly as useful in judging the individual student’s assimilation of subject matter into his/her life. The teacher is in a better position to make this kind of judgment because the teacher is the educator, the activating principle in the student’s learning, the Pied Piper luring young students forward. The teacher is not the tyrant who commands or the demagogue who incites, but the learned practitioner of the art of persuasion and the trusted guide into the realms of knowledge and, potentially, wisdom.

Let’s move beyond definitions to specific concerns with our public school system, beginning with the role of curriculum in education. The subject of curriculum is a complicated subject because it encompasses many moving parts: objectives, scope, continuity/integration, and appropriate gradation through age levels. There are places in the world where curriculum is solely determined by politics or religious predilections. Here in America, curriculum is sometimes influenced by the same factions, though generally not controlled by them. For example, there are states where teachers are told to teach creationism as part of a science curriculum. Another example is the fact that many textbooks have little to say about the role of women and minorities in America’s history. Perhaps a more generic influence from the political sector is the exclusive emphasis on math and science. The result has been a progressive decline in funding for the humanities—history, literature, art, music, and philosophy. This emphasis comes from a politically magnified “public” perception of the importance science and technology play in the growth of America’s economy. But political perception is not a solid basis for building a curriculum and not conducive to education per se. The ability for young minds to develop critical thinking, to become self-reflective, to learn from the past, to not only articulate original concepts, but to create them comes from a curriculum balanced by the humanities. My voice is not alone in making this observation. Teachers seem to understand it. But our contemporary public school system seems oblivious, partly due to economic and political pressures and equally as a result of losing its way. Somehow, school district administrators have become more engrossed with other areas such as test scores as a measure of student and teacher performance, with physical infrastructure in the form of facilities and resources, or with public image that mirrors whatever conventional wisdom rules the day. The educator in the classroom, as a result, may have less to say about what is taught in the classroom than the politician, the administrator, or naïve public opinion. In the state where I live 40% of the education budget is allocated to school district administration; and my state ranks in the bottom 10% of student performance across the United States. Teachers and curriculum are managed by a top-heavy bureaucracy that is controlled by non-educative forces, the so-called “representative public.” If this bureaucracy continues to define compulsory education, then the emphasis will be more on “compulsory” than on “education.”

I remember talking to a high school math teacher about his frustrations with many of his students. In spite of all the support he received from the school district, his students did not see the relevance of advanced math classes to their lives. He often cajoled them about the future job market and their limited prospects without a strong foundation in math. Their response, according to him, was apathy based upon a conviction that they already had all they needed in terms of wheels (many had cars), sexual relations, and even an occasional “high.” They had no need of advanced math skills. Unfortunately, even in their myopic adolescent context, they were inadvertently right. Though advanced math skills may help them get a job as a particular type of programmer or engineer, it would not help them live a better life unless those skills were wedded to a greater sense of purpose and self-worth. My point here is that jobs do not define who we are. Instead, we either define our jobs and the relationships that come with them, or are doomed to hollow careers. These students had no broader view of life’s prospects. Instinctively, their resistance to learning math was a blind admission that there must be more to life than a better paying job. They just had no way of identifying that life. Their teacher also had no way of integrating what math had to offer with a broader curriculum that included a perspective traditionally proffered by the humanities. For example, math is not just about manipulating numbers but a way of identifying and calculating numerical relationships that both enable us to engineer change and enhance our perspective of the world. The harmony of the cosmos has both a numerological component and philosophic/poetic/inspirational agency. These students were not prepared to see math in the context of beauty or purpose or personal meaning. The fault here does not lie with the teacher or his students, for it was the system that failed them both.

Finally, a public education system has to be a form of community. All elements of that system—parents, administrators, politicians/legislators, and teachers—need to work together. The head of this phalanx is the teacher, for the primary relationship is between the teacher and the student. But the other members of this community have an important support role. Parents, for example, want to support their children’s education. But they tend to air their frustrations with administrators rather than in constructive dialogue with their children’s teachers. Administrators can play the role of diplomats, but they cannot replace the teacher in explaining relationships in the classroom. They may be quite ineffective in this context; and parents are likely to be frustrated in their desire to support the education of their children. Teachers can also be frustrated, because they too often lack the influence they need to develop/reform educational policies. They turn to their unions to advocate not only for them but for their students. But the unions should only be representing teachers before the school districts. Misapplication of their role in respect to students only adds a political dimension and a confrontational aspect to the constructive relationships that are required within this educational community. Politicians/legislators are also part of this community and have an obligation to manage and fund school districts. But they have little or no competence in defining curriculum or evaluating what happens in a specific classroom. Their management is at the level of overall system performance. The tools they have for evaluating performance are generic and need to be tempered by school district assessments. And it is at this pivotal administration level where this education community seems most in jeopardy. All elements of the community speak to school principals and district managers/appointees. Their job is integral to communication within this community, but not to actual teaching in the classroom. They can effectively assist the teacher in many ways, with constructive performance reviews, with training, with classroom resources, with student behavioral issues, with effective monitoring of parent/teacher meetings, and with honest representation of actual teaching requirements in funding requests. But they cannot function in any of these capacities if they are not clear on the meaning of education and the primacy of the relationship between the teacher and the student. School administration can become a bloated bureaucracy, a black hole of communication, and a political apparatchik that serves no interest other than its own preservation. Wherever this prognosis may be valid, there is no effective education community and little if any support for the teacher in the classroom and ultimately for student achievements in our public school system.

Children are both the beneficiaries of our education system and the victims of its shortfalls. We, their forebears, naturally want to leave our children better prepared than we were to live a fulfilling life. Human progress demands as much. But, currently, our public education system is in decline. Parents are frustrated with it. Politics and bureaucracy obfuscate its purpose and befuddle reform. Teachers are blamed rather than empowered. And students are less inspired than handicapped by unbalanced and unintegrated curriculums. This level of dysfunction is the status quo only when “education” is not education.

Our system of two major political parties has produced much contention and a surprising amount of weirdness. The former is obvious from our history; the latter might be just my peculiar obsession. Let me first elaborate on what I mean: what is or is not the weirdness that seems to bother me.

You would not expect a donkey to crush you with its front hoofs or an elephant to kick you with its rear legs. Yet both the Republican and Democratic parties switch their attack modes indiscriminately. In sync with these switches are reversals in strongly held ideological positions and traditional policy positions. There are so many examples of these inconsistencies that it is hard to envision how anybody can cling to party loyalty for more than one election cycle. Here are a few samples that make my point:
• A Democratic President ordered the only use of nuclear weapons in war (Truman); and a second Democratic President threatened their use in defense of a territorial protectorate dating back to the Monroe Doctrine (Kennedy).
• The Republican President who spoke most eloquently against entitlements strongly supported “a welfare system structured not to trap the poor in dependency but to enable them to escape poverty” (Nixon). That same President, an avowed anti-communist, opened relationships with communist China.
• Two Republican Presidents in succession raised taxes in order to forestall impending debt crises (Reagan and Bush 41).
• A Democratic President eliminated the barrier between traditional and investment banking (the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act) which put individual deposits at risk in the market for financial securities like derivatives and, in great part, enabled the Great Recession of contemporary times (Clinton). The same President sponsored reform of the welfare system to reduce long term dependency and promote re-employment education and job placement services.
• A Republican President proposed a plan that would have reformed the nation’s immigration policies and granted a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants (Bush 43). That same President sponsored a huge expansion of the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and deficit spending.
• A Democratic President, with a Democratic majority in both houses of the legislature, was able to advance a healthcare program based upon the Republican proposition of mandated private insurance for everyone (Obama).
So what can we construe from this short list of paradoxes? Democrats are not always wisps on foreign policy, anathema to business interests, and sublimely socialist on domestic issues. Republicans, on the other hand, are not the only war mongers and staunch supporters of reduced taxation, of limited government, of mindless or insensitive constriction in entitlements, and of immigration reform that both curtails and deports illegals. Given the actual track record of the Parties, what can be said about the relevance of ideology and consistency in party politics? Perhaps not much! And maybe not weird either.

We are accustomed to politicians changing positions. Sometimes the opportunism behind these changes is so apparent as to be ridiculous and the welcome gist of satire. But they are tolerated as “politics as usual,” and not considered weird. And I would agree—though with some stipulation. Presidents in particular should not be wedded to a party-line because they are elected to serve all parties in the electorate. For the most part, I believe we elect people as much for their character as for their policy positions. In other words, we trust them and entrust our government to their honesty and wisdom. For example, in 2008 we elected a “progressive” who promised to change the divisive atmosphere in Washington among his many campaign promises. His first attempt to create bipartisan support for his progressive agenda was health care reform based upon a decades old Republican proposal already enacted in Massachusetts. The Republicans were irate for he had stolen their only stake in the game. The Democrats were disappointed their President did not put forth a new government program along the lines of “Medicare for all.” He even killed the so-called “public option.” But, at the time, the President commandeered his party with a 70% approval rating and apparently large coattails. Besides, Congressional Democrats seemed to enjoy rubbing their majority in the face of Republican opposition. But in fact they found it difficult to embrace the President’s healthcare reform as evidenced by their unwillingness to defend it in the mid-term elections. The Democrats won a Pyrrhic victory: they passed healthcare reform, but on the basis of a private insurance market that they genetically detested. Republicans lost the battle at the hands of their own sword and, in the process, lost the opportunity to defuse new regulatory restrictions on that private market. Neither party got what they wanted out of the healthcare debate. But the American people got Obamacare with all its benefits and regulatory baggage. So what is so weird about a new program that neither party fully supported? Well, nothing really! The party of Lincoln, remember, was not wholly enthused with the civil rights legislature of the 60s, and the Democrats who passed it lost the Southern portion of their party for generations.

Democracy is messy. Change comes from elections, but not wholly formed. Debates in Congress will push and pull new proposals into almost unrecognizable forms. When passed by majorities in both Houses and signed by the President, new programs may be established but may still not be in final form. Civil rights laws from the 1960’s are still being amended in legislatures and clarified in courts. Medicare has seen more than a few modifications over time. Voting rights, housing discrimination, free trade treaties, tax law, and so many other policies will continue to be refined and debated. Democracies and their governance will always be—and must be—in flux. Parties change sides. Liberal prescriptions for change become conservative positions in another era, and vice versa. And Presidents can be out of sync with party ideology, especially when they respond to their perception of the general welfare. So what is the weirdness I find in American politics today?

The determinant factor in a democracy has to be the will of the people. When our elected officials do not respond to the public will, weirdness has entered into our democratic reality. Whether its gun laws, immigration reform, tax law inequities, campaign finance reform or a host of other issues, there seems to be a disconnect between the electorate and elected officials. The latter seem more intent on serving minority interest and campaign funding sources than the American voters (reference “The Clash of Minorities”). Strict party line voting is another type of weirdness in our democracy. About two thirds of the electorate tends to vote for the same party in every election without regard to changes in platform. Perhaps voters are not paying attention to changing party positions. Perhaps they simply are not listening to the issues being debated or are only paying attention to the arguments with which they already agree. Democracy is messy and in constant flux. If we pay no attention to that flux, then we become responsible for the ensuing chaos. As we enter the season of Presidential politics, we will see politicians taking positions without substance (“Obamacare is a job killer”) and saying things that boggle the mind (“self-deportation” or “jihadists will kill us all”). Politicians may do whatever they think will get them attention and possibly elected. We, as the keepers of our democracy, must be attentive to all sides of an issue and vote our best judgment. It is not the political voices we hear, but the internal voice of reasoned reflection and conscience that can eliminate the weirdness of American politics.

Democracy boasts many freedoms. But individual freedom comes at a price. That price is accountability. Blind party loyalty suspends individual accountability—and therefore freedom—to a collective. The virtual public forum where all sides of an issue can be weighed is in each of our minds. Disregard the abstract nonsense about the “destruction of our way of life” or the promise to “make America great again.” Listen carefully to both sides of a real issue—like immigration or tax reform—and imagine yourself on the other side of your chosen position. Only when you can understand an opposing view will you be in a position to make an informed judgment and vote your conscience. You will then be in that public forum where democracies live and evolve. You will also help free me from my obsession with the weirdness of American politics.

There is “nothing to fear but fear itself,” President Roosevelt told an anxious citizenry. The fear he referenced was based upon the reality of Pearl Harbor and of enemy subs firing shells at the West Coast (a few fell harmlessly on vacant farmlands). Those events seemed like harbingers of a full scale invasion and a realistic basis for widespread fear and its corollary, a gut response. One columnist in California proclaimed that he hated all Japanese, including those born in this country. But Roosevelt was trying to exercise leadership by quelling an over reactive mass hysteria and, at the same time, focusing the nation on the task at hand—which was building the armaments and resources needed for full scale war. The nation was facing a real existential threat that required a massive mobilization effort. Decades later on 9-11 America suffered another attack upon its homeland. Although on this occasion the nation was not facing an existential threat, President Bush recognized that he would need support both from the American people and from Congress in order to exact justice on the culprits. That support was readily given in the polls and in legislative action. But, other than garnering support, he never required anything else from the American people. When he extended his war powers to include Iraq, his Administration used the age old political tool of inciting fear. Remember the “evidence” that Hussein was plotting with terrorists and harboring nuclear weapons or the image of a mushroom cloud hanging over an American city. The politics of fear are not just of recent vintage: state leaders and politicians have used fear to manipulate a susceptible public throughout history. But the use of fear in this manner—to obtain war authority—is not leadership, for it asks nothing of its followers other than the license to wage war in their name. We were never asked to do more than watch “shock and awe” on television and vow support for our troops. Machiavelli once said that “a prince must have no other object and no other thought than war and its methods and conduct . . .” The use of fear is one of those methods, assuring the desired public reaction of acquiescence to the prince’s power to wage war. But Machiavelli was a despot. Persuasion was merely part of his arsenal to disarm naysayers so that he might exercise state power freely. His type of leadership should have no influence in a free, democratic society. President Bush may have commanded a volunteer army that represented half of one percent of the U. S. population, but he never persuaded the American people to do anything other than blindly acquiesce to the invasion of Iraq. In a democracy, however, we would expect debate on matters of war and peace and a public persuaded to some form of common action. You may think this analysis is too harsh. But ask yourself whether Americans would have supported our recent wars if a war tax had been suggested or if a selective service system had been proposed for reinstatement. President Roosevelt in effect did both, raised revenue and called Americans to arms. President Bush only asked for a license to do whatever his Administration decided. His initial cause was just; his intent may have been pure; but his sole rallying cry was based on fear. That fear was indeed something to fear in itself, for it blinded Americans to reality and to the war’s false justification.

Since World War II, America has engaged in many military conflicts around the world. Those conflicts have changed history, but too often not in favor of our objectives. Witness North Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, and now Syria, to name a few. My thesis today is simply that we have allowed the definition of “existential threat” to be inflated well beyond its meaning and have fallen victim to the politics of fear. I am not advocating disengagement from world affairs, but for more honesty from our leaders and much more participation by the American public. Given all the military engagements of the intervening decades, how many Americans have even reflected on the fact that we have not had to defend our nation from a foreign state since World War II? We have instead interjected our military in civil wars where the ultimate outcome had little likelihood of being determined by America. Our troops were put in harm’s way to assuage our fears of radical ideologies like communism or extreme jihadism, wayward dictators who posed no threat to America, and the unproven existence of WMDs in a country without the means to deliver them. And yet, since World War II, the only effective use of our military power against an actual existential threat was as a deterrent in the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy’s deft use of that deterrent averted World War III. He also gave substance to President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy mantra, “speak softly but carry a big stick.” The emphasis here is on “carry.” Currently, America has the biggest stick and the most effective deterrent to any existential threat since the Roman Empire. In addition, we also have significant financial, cultural, and diplomatic capabilities with which to influence the world community. Our use of military power to defend ourselves has never been questioned. But any deviant exercise of that power runs the risk of undermining our global influence and betraying the trust of the American public. Amongst other core values outlined in the preamble to our Constitution, the United States of America was formed to “provide for the common defense.” This country has no colonies, no empire, and no fiefdoms to protect. But we will defend our nation and by extension our allies, because we exist for ourselves foremost and as a beacon of freedom for the world. As an enlightened nation, we should never permit our leaders to govern by fear. Our founding fathers outlined for us a path forward that called for public debate and consensus. These prescriptions demand reasoned decision making from our representatives, not manipulative fear mongering. Too many times of late, we have been flummoxed by the politics of fear, rather than honest judgment.

In America we are at the beginning of an extended electoral campaign. This is the season where the politics of fear will pour into every media catch basin and overflow into the fertile unconscious of all of us. Already presidential candidates have stated that “jihadists will kill us all,” presumably unless we kill them first, that Russia will retake its empire and threaten America with its nuclear arsenal, that China’s rise will hold America’s debt in the balance as it extends its power over all of Asia, that immigrants from our southern border will infringe our freedoms and steal benefits and resources from law-abiding Americans. According to the fear brokers, we need strong leaders who will deploy our troops in Syria and Iraq, bolster Ukraine with high-powered armaments and U. S. military advisors, sail warships into the South China Sea, and buffer our southern borders with even greater military force and drones. Certainly, there are real global issues that America faces in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and our own Western Hemisphere. But the only existential threat America faces at this time is from within. Gridlock and partisanship in Washington has stymied effective governance. Growing financial inequality threatens the fabric of society where not only income but wealth, education, and opportunity are relegated to an ever-decreasing privileged. The nation’s outstanding productivity is squandered with trillions of dollars spent on foreign wars while our infrastructure withers from lack of investment and our inner cities become conclaves of poverty where only neglect and desperate crime prosper. And perhaps the biggest existential threat is a pliable citizenry duped by the politics of fear.

The politics of fear may be a proven way to win over an electorate, but it treads a dangerous path towards governance. For fear suborns judgment. Remember “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”